Vic Mensa Shares Passionate Open Letter about Donald Trump’s Win

In lieu of typing out several 140-character tweets to share how they feel about Donald Trump’s win last Tuesday (November 8th), some artists have taken to writing open letters. After all, there’s a lot to parse out from this victory and what it means for the United States.

Following Moby’s angry and excoriating letter shared one day after Trump’s victory, Vic Mensa shared an open letter with Billboard about what happens from here. “I was kind of woozy when I first found out. Just to see such a symbol of hatred and opposition to equality be put in our nation’s highest office,” Mensa explained in his letter’s opening, but he quickly realized that Trump is a wakeup call. “Then, when I woke up in the morning, I realized that this had to happen because we’ve been pacified by having Barack [Obama] in office. That pacification would have only continued by having Hillary elected.”

Mensa continued, “My fight doesn’t end here no matter the outcome.”

The biggest thing moving forward, according to Mensa, is to get on the same page. “Until we can regroup and re-identify the real issues in our society — which I think Bernie Sanders started to get people focused on — we’re gonna have all of this pointless fighting in this country that’s not taking us anywhere positive,” he wrote.

And it’s important not to point fingers. “We can’t solve the problems of the poor by blaming other poor people. It’s not poor people taking each other’s jobs; it’s major corporations,” Mensa stated. “It’s shipping companies overseas, technology changing and factory positions being done by machines. But, right now, it’s just a hoax. I feel like that’s gonna bring out the worst in a lot of people in America because hurt people hurt people. I know that. Some people in these small towns with heroin epidemics and lack of employment — they’re hurt — and the easiest way to approach that is to blame somebody of a different race; to blame ‘the others.’ It’s a lot more difficult to identify the real structural issues that have us disenfranchised all across this nation.”

Mensa added that he and others are considering putting together a larger movement than Black Lives Matter, one that reaches out and includes anyone affected by racism, bigotry, xenophobia and more. “We need to unify and decide what it is that we really believe in — that’s what we need to fight for. We can’t just fight against injustice,” he wrote. “We gotta fight for justice.”